Mali Reports First Death From Ebola

DAKAR, Senegal — The little girl who became Mali’s first Ebola case has died after a bus journey across two countries that probably exposed dozens of people to the virus, her family, officials and Malian news websites said Friday afternoon.

Shortly before her death was announced, the World Health Organization warned that the 2-year-old girl had been bleeding from the nose when her grandmother picked her up in Guinea for a trip across hundreds of miles to Mali. That trip, health officials suggested in unusually blunt language, poses a significant risk for both nations, but especially Mali, which has now become the sixth West African nation to record a case of the disease.

“W.H.O. is treating the situation in Mali as an emergency,” the agency said in a news release Friday afternoon. “The child’s symptomatic state during the bus journey is especially concerning, as it presented multiple opportunities for exposures — including high-risk exposures — involving many people.”

Dozens of contacts are now being traced, but it is unlikely that everybody who encountered the child on public transportation will be identified.

In addition, Mali, one of the poorest nations in one of the world’s most impoverished regions, is as ill-prepared to contain Ebola as its regional neighbors already battling the disease. It has weak institutions and infrastructure, made worse after two years of upheaval, which forced tens of thousands of citizens to flee their homes. Many citizens are still displaced. A coup in 2012, an Islamist takeover of much of the country, foreign military intervention, and renewed questions about the probity of the new government leave Mali potentially exposed to an extensive outbreak of the disease.

The girl’s grandmother had traveled from Mali to attend a funeral in Kissidougou in Guinea’s Forest Region, the cradle of the current outbreak. The funeral was possibly for the girl’s mother, who might have died of Ebola, according to the W.H.O.

Cheick Diouara contributed from Bamako, Mali.

A version of this article appears in print on , on Page A18 of the New York edition with the headline: Mali Reports First Death From Virus. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe